Juventus and co "demoted to Serie B", say reports

I suspect the bottling will grow via the medium of "appeals" and so on.

It's a grebt decision in at least one way - that big, beefy and G14-homie clubs are being punished not just in a simple fine that would be a rap on the knuckles, but in a far more hurtful way - a way that knocks them out of the perpetual cycle of league-attention-champs league-telly-money-league...etc.

However, I'm no Juve fan at all but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for their genuine fans, ditto Fiorentina and even Nazio.

Surely it would be the chance for supporters of "Athletico Neasden" or equivalent, to see the mighty Juve play their team, and make every match a 'giant killing' episode potentially?

Or is it due to 'media sales' etc?

(Oh god, I'm on a football thread like I care!)

It's like Italian justice is a ideal, rather than an actuality. You'll be telling me that the Prime Minister was elected in order to change certain laws to stop him being outed as a corrupt fuck, or something equally outlandish.

re: serie C1

Napoli were in serie C1 last season and just smashed the attendance record, 51,000 people

"On April 15, 2006, Napoli was promoted to Serie B after a 2-0 win at home to Perugia. This win also secured Napoli as 2005/2006 Serie C champions. It is also noted that Napoli achieved the record for highest attendance in a Serie C match with more than 51,000 spectators. On May 23 the club changed its name to S.S.C. Napoli."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoli_Soccer

Juventus may be a big name, but they are not well supported at actual games. Q: what were Juventus typical attentances last season, not including the big city Northern derbies with Inter and AC Milan.

English football doesn't split into geographic areas until "level 6" i.e Nationwide Conference North and South

Lazio's full name is SS Lazio. Always struck me as wholly appropriate.

Juve will send most of their players on a one-year loan now, I guess. The rest will stay - after all, there's no Euros or World Cup summer to make the national team for, so a season in B won't be too painful. Walk Serie B probably with whoever's left - even with a 15-point penalty they should get 4th - then call back Trezeguet and co for a CL-commitments-free assault on Serie A in 2007-8. The heart sinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.C._Messina

Dom, if so there will be 3 Sicily based fopotball clubs in Serie A next season, will this be a first?

joining

Dom's: U.S. Città di Palermo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Citt%C3%A0_di_Palermo

and newly promoted:

Calcio Catania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_Catania

I've never been keen on punishing the club (and the fans as a result) as a whole, so am reluctant to view it as a cop-out in that regard.

Tresco fans regularly taunt supporters of St Agnes FC with taunts of 'your mum is your sister' to the tune of the Go West. St Agnes fans are a jocular lot and respond with 'Agnes, wherever we may be, we fuck cows in our home country'.

(see Dundee trying to get Livingston relegated for fielding an ineligible player 2004/2005 - not fair on the rest of the Livi players who did enough to not finish bottom of the league, but similarly not fair on Dundee who didn't flout the transfer rules to bolster their squad, thus finishing bottom)

xpost, obviously

AC Milan will stay in Serie A but will lose 15 points and will be kicked out of the Champions League.

Juventus were also stripped of their last two titles and had 30 points deducted meaning that they are almost certain to stay down for two seasons.

Lazio were penalised seven points while Fiorentina suffered a 12 point penalty.

Milan (2) 58,023
Inter (3) 50,702
Roma (5) 39,015
Fiorentina (4) 31,583
Juventus (1) 30,158
Lazio (6) 28,253
Palermo (8) 27,950
Messina (18) 25,000
Sampdoria (14) 22,637
Udinese (13) 16,383
Reggina (15) 14,876
Parma (10) 14,659
Livorno (9) 13,211
Lecce (19) 12,533
Cagliari (16) 12,487
Ascoli (12) 10,872
Chievo (7) 10,003
Siena (17) 9,874
Empoli (11) 8,213
Treviso (20) 6,890

It's a bit like looking at English attendances in the mid-80s (and judging from the violence at Italian games it's probably quite similar to that time in other ways). It's striking how little strength in depth there is in Italy - plenty of English second tier teams get more than most Serie A teams, and it's unthinkable that a Premiership team could get average gates of less than 10,000 (even if they were a small club made good, like Wimbledon or Wigan, there would be plenty of away fans to fill the seats).

Udinese (13) 16,383
Reggina (15) 14,876
Parma (10) 14,659
Livorno (9) 13,211
Lecce (19) 12,533
Cagliari (16) 12,487
Ascoli (12) 10,872
Chievo (7) 10,003
Siena (17) 9,874
Empoli (11) 8,213
Treviso (20) 6,890

Treviso 6, 890 ! there are clubs in League 2 [4th Level in England] with bigger attendances !

A: Between the Alps and Venice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treviso

Treviso is a town in the Veneto region of Italy. It is the capital of Treviso province. The municipality has 82,112 inhabitants (December 2004): some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city hinterland has a population of some 170,000.

ahem

http://www.soccer-stats.com/divisions/attendances.asp?divno=1&orderby=7

Surely that would only affect the number of away fans?

xpost, damn you. ;-)

Champions League in practice thanks to allocation of places and preferential seeding - teams drawn from all over the wealthiest western European countries, give or take a stray heavily-financed Balkan behemoth club.

Average Attendance for 2005/2006 in League 2:

Carlisle 7,218
Bristol Rovers 5,989
Northampton 5,935
Notts County 5,466
Wycombe 5,444

I'm not sure what they were convicted for though.

Sucked in!

the verdict also means that Lecce, Messina, and Treviso will avoid relegation to Serie B and remain in the top flight.

As expected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serie_B

Albinoleffe | Arezzo | Bari | Bologna | Brescia | Cesena | Crotone | Fiorentina* | Frosinone | Genoa | Juventus*
Lazio* | Mantova | Modena | Napoli | Pescara | Piacenza | Rimini | Spezia | Triestina | Verona | Vicenza

* - pending appeal

Teams 2006-2007

* U.C. AlbinoLeffe (Albino and Leffe)
* A.C. Arezzo (Arezzo)
* A.S. Bari (Bari)
* Bologna F.C. 1909 (Bologna)
* Brescia Calcio (Brescia)
* A.C. Cesena (Cesena)
* F.C. Crotone (Crotone)
* ACF Fiorentina (Florence) (to be deducted 12 points for the 2006/07 season)
* Frosinone Calcio (Frosinone)
* Genoa C.F.C. (Genoa)
* Juventus F.C. (Turin) (to be deducted 30 points for the 2006/07 season)
* S.S. Lazio (Rome) (to be deducted 7 points for the 2006/07 season)
* A.C. Mantova (Mantua)
* Modena F.C. (Modena)
* S.S.C. Napoli (Naples)
* Pescara Calcio (Pescara)
* Piacenza F.C. (Piacenza)
* Rimini Calcio F.C. (Rimini)
* Spezia Calcio 1906 (La Spezia)
* U.S. Triestina Calcio (Trieste)
* Hellas Verona F.C. (Verona)
* Vicenza Calcio (Vicenza)

Big clubs:

3 kicked out of Serie A
1. Juventus
2. Fiorentina
3. Lazio

plus Napoli who last season had an attendance of over 50,000 in a game in Serie C !
4. Napoli

Medium Sized clubs [Clubs with recent Seire A experience] Does anyone know the attendances for these Serie B clubs last season:

5. Bari
6. Bologna F.C
7. Brescia
8. Modena
9. Piacenza F.C
10. Verona

plus: a blast from the past / club in a big city

11. Genoa

the rest 11 Serie B are small clubs with no significant football pedigree:

Albinoleffe
Arezzo
Cesena
Crotone
Frosinone [Newly promoted club never been in Serie B before, stadium Capacity 5,300]
Mantova
Pescara
Rimini
Spezia
Triestina
Vicenza [last in Serie A in 2001, however have stuggled in Serie B since then]

even if they miss out on euro cash and the scudetto, it's still a bit of a result for milan. especially if they can nick a few players on the cheap as well, like say buffon.

also lol @ insane no excuses pressure on inter now!! bet u 50p they still manage to bottle it somehow

whats this licence milan claim empoli don't have? is it related to stadium safety etc?

they still go up tho! the vacation of Juve, Lazio and Fiorentina means that in addition to the retention of last season's Serie A bottom three a further three teams are required to fill the slots vacated by the offending clubs i.e. Serie B's top three (or top two + play-off winner in this case) from last season. sorry if i misunderstand here.

Atalanta [Champions]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atalanta_B.C.

Calcio_Catania [Second]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_Catania

Torino_F.C [who won the play off]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_F.C

Possible options to replace Juventus, Lazio, Fiorentina:

Option 1: Serie A 18th 19th 20th for 2005/ 2006 - Stay Up [A reprieve]

Messina
Lecce
Treviso

Option 2: Serie B Play off losers [Mantova], plus the next 2 highest finishers who lost the semi final of the play offs, Modena and Cesena. This option you would be rewarding relative failure.

Option 3: My suggestion of a fairer way
if they had more time they could have arranged some sort of mini knockout: stick these 6 teams into a draw play 3 matches with two legs each home and away, the aggregate winners of these 3 matches get to play in Serie A next season. You could split the draw into Serie A and Serie B. Therefore the 3 reprieve clubs would have to earn their right to retain the Serie A status.

However they have selected Option 1. The easy option.

Bologna 10,919, Verona 8,606, Vicenza 5,315, Bari 4,848, Piacenza 4,744, Brescia 4,491.

Those sound amazingly low, but it looks like support generally is much lower outside the top tier outside of England:

England: 1. 33,864 2. 17,616
Italy: 1. 21,698 2. 7,205
Spain: 1. 29,029 2. 6,593
Germany: 1. 40,745 2. 13,124

Stadio Grande Torino and is to be used as the home ground of local football team Torino F.C.. Juventus will also play at the stadium while its own ground, Stadio delle Alpi, is reconstructed.

The new version of the stadium has 27,128 covered seats

Will Juventus will this in Serie B?

97 teams in Europe got average crowds of over 20,000 last season and about a third of them are English. Teams like Wigan and Reading are in the top 100, and even low-flying Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest are in there. Juventus rank 49th (behind West Ham, Aston Villa, and Sunderland to name a few).

Matt - The difference between Serie c and B is that Serie C doesn't share the TV deal with Serie B; relegation out of B to C makes a big difference financially speaking.

You cynic! Why, I'm almost suspicious. ;-)

(I'm not going as I am lame, also I will be participating in Trig Brother))

I still don't think that quite cuts it on the romance front.

You have to be on call all weekend, Hobb?

In a word, 'yes'.

1x pair of balls

property of Italian football feds

if found please return for substantial brown envelope reward

what i really want to know is why is there such a big gap between the semi finals and the final of the coppa italia?

good documentary on this on Netflix show Bad Sport. I'd forgotten this happened and I wasn't into football at the time so it's pretty interesting.

anybody else seen it?